Midterm Fatigue

School was wearing me out.  It's not the constant reading or the papers...truly, the workload has not been terribly heavy.  But I have been thinking about things, and even my thought processes are different.  My earlier post about Madama Butterfly is a great example of how my social/cultural class has affected my thinking.  Two days after the opera DH and I went to a Falcons game--it was the one where the guy kicked a field goal with one second left and made it!! Very exciting.  But I spent half my time kind of looking around at the crowd and thinking about how different this group was than the opera group, and why, and did it matter, and what did I think about that. To top it off, there was a Hindu festival going on in Centennial Olympic Park before the game.  If we hadn't been at the game with (Chinese) friends who have ABSOLUTELY no interest and think I've lost my mind, DH and I would have stopped and checked that out, too. (DH is a super-good sport about his crazy wife!)

Even when I'm just talking to someone, there's this constant little voice:  "Ooh! Closed question! Focus on the positive! Empathy! I need Empathy! How's that body language? Are you mirroring? Don't forget to reflect--but go for the feelings! Get off the content! Move to feelings, or even values! Where is the  meaning? WHERE IS THE MEANING?" Good Lord, it's like I have my own personal film director constantly after me to make a freaking blockbuster.  It ain't happening. Or, not quickly enough to make this nag go away.

One of the problems with all of this is that I feel really anxious a lot of the time...I feel like I'm always getting caught doing something wrong (that stupid director again).  In some ways this has been like opening a Pandora's box of ideas in my own head, and now I'll never be able to silence it.

I know (somewhere) that this is really temporary--at least I hope so.  Until then, I've got to figure out a way to accept this, take it maybe as encouragement and not nagging. In the long run it will produce some changes that will make me a better counselor and maybe even a better wife and parent. It's just that parts of this road are bumpier than I'd anticipated, and so early in the journey!